[mfcl]

I was thinking, I can currently go from NA to Europe today if I wanted to. But that level of technology and orchestration would not be possible in a lawless and barbaric society (at least I don't think so). This possibility offers me a lot of freedom (traveling around the world) and in exchange, I had to follow rules and work. I gave some freedom and got more in exchange. The same thing applies for many other things like communication, food, entertainment, etc.

But in the end we all win, for each unit of freedom we give away (or invest), we get more back (ideally).

So is equilibrium the right word? Or maybe we are talking about different things. I don't know, I'm not making a statement or counter-argument here, just thinking out loud.

There are definitely attempts in the world to restrict freedom not in the word of efficiency, but control and power. The line between the two can be blurry.

[988747]

You make a mistake in equating "barbaric society" with freedom. Barbarians weren't free, maybe except their chief and elders. Common tribe members were all subordinated - the tribe would even put some mark on their body (tattoo, circumcision) to remind them that they are tribe's property. Democratic society is much more free than a barbaric one.

[marginalia_nu]

What do you mean when you say free?

[988747]

Ability to make your own choices. The way I understand barbaric societies is that whatever your elders come up with you are obliged to follow their lead, if you object you will be banished or killed.

[marginalia_nu]

You can still do that in any society. Even though it's illegal, you can run a red light or cheat on your taxes. The notion that you somehow can't is just mauvaise foi. Of course you can. You're choosing not to.

Seems like you are describing freedom from consequences, not the ability to make choices, because that's available now and to the barbarian. I'm not sure which society has no consequences.

[lvass]

>You can still do that in any society. Even though it's illegal, you can run a red light or cheat on your taxes

By that logic, there is no such thing as restriction of freedom, as it assumes even someone's ability to jail you does not restrict your freedom in any way. People in jail are free as a corollary. How is this not absurd? It only makes sense if you hate freedom and want to argue against it to people low on rhetoric.

[marginalia_nu]

I'm arguing against the particular definition of freedom given, not against freedom itself.

[ttfkam]

Apparently you haven't read anything by Jean-Paul Sartre.

[vageli]

And if you are arrested after making one of these illegal choices, are you still free?

[marginalia_nu]

If you plunge a sword into your chest, you also can't make choices later on. Does that mean it's impossible to choose to plunge a sword into your chest?

[freeflight]

> you are obliged to follow their lead, if you object you will be banished or killed

Not really that different to today, except that it's a circle of elders and their lead is codified in laws.

But breaking these laws will still get you "banished" aka deported if you are not a citizen, and if you are citizen you will face consequences for your noncompliance, which in some places can still reach all the way up to the death sentence.

So in a way it's still all just barbaric societies, but with extra steps.

[nybble41]

> So in a way it's still all just barbaric societies, but with extra steps.

You've got it. Proper civilization and a free society are still a long way off. Laws and democracy limit the variance (good and bad) but don't automatically create a better outcome. We still need people to make the right decisions. And these systems of law and democracy which serve mainly to promote stability introduce their own problems by encouraging people to confuse "legal" or "popular" with "right", and "illegal" or "unpopular" with "wrong".

[thegrimmest]

I've proposed a definition here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29267283

Would appreciate your thoughts

[slx26]

These are all very interesting thoughts, including the comment you are responding too. I just want to make the situation even more tricky and point out that freedom is not only about the amount of choices you have available, so giving something away to get more choices is not always positive. There's a bound on complexity, and it turns out that freedom requires "space" to decide, not only "availability" of choices. Rules and restrictions, even if implicit (unspoken rules, cultural expectations, etc.), do reduce our freedom by reducing our space to decide, pressuring us in some ways.

EDIT: in any case, beyond a fairly low minimum, freedom is usually not so much about raw number of choices as it is about relative number of choices, comparing what options others have access to and what options do we have access to. So I think we should focus and work more towards "healthy freedom ranges" and freedom equality and coverage (not leaving some people out) than pretending that any single change increases or reduces our freedom in a dramatic fixed amount. To me, the freedom scale is clearly not linear. (Now I'm not even so sure "freedom" is the right word to focus on. It's more about "unobstructed human potential" than about "possibilities" to me.)

[BobbyJo]

It's a non-static, non-homogenous, equilibrium. It changes with technology, environment, and culture.

As surveillance gets easier, we need to choose having crime for the sake of privacy. As the manufacture of dangerous materials and weapons gets easier, we need to choose between living in a more dangerous world, or slowing human progress.

Not every culture has the same risk tolerance. Not every time period has the same risks.

[Ialdaboth]

You can have both surveillance and crime, they are not mutually exclusive.

[BobbyJo]

That would be one of the equilibriums I'm attempting to reference.

[woile]

I'd argue that hunter gatherers had all of the units of freedoms, and when full centralization happened (monarchies) we lost all those units. Democracy gave you back some units by decentralizing power (not fully).

I'm not saying decentralizing more is gonna give you more freedom, more like a different take. I think your point is still valid, there has to be an equilibrium and I just don't know where it lays.

[ewzimm]

I think you would enjoy the recently published book, "The Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber and David Wengrow. A point made early in the book is that Native American criticisms of European society, particularly its lack of freedom and mutual aid, led to the development of defensive European theories of civilizational development that proposed that the loss of freedom was the inevitable result of the movement from hunter-gatherer societies toward agriculture and monarchies. Democratic revolutions around the world have changed cultural attitudes about freedom to be much more like Native American ideas, but many people still operate in the framework of civilizational development that had more to do with justifying power than accurately modeling historical events.

The idea that we would have to revert to independent bands of hunter-gatherers to achieve freedom acts as a mental block. This is not to say that this movement away from freedom is completely ahistorical but that cultural attitudes about power have been much more dynamic, flexible, and even seasonal than the kind of linear movement toward inevitable constraints that might fit into the theory. By examining the many different types of arrengements people have instituted, we might learn new ways of organizing ourselves. There are plenty of opportunities to do so in the world today.

[tremon]

What does "Native American" mean in your post? Are you referring to early interactions between the colonizers and the inhabitants of North America, or present-day Native Americans that have lived in Europe?

[ewzimm]

I'm referring to a series of cultural criticisms that began around the 16th century and have continued into the present day. Some were by people who only encountered Europeans in America. Others traveled to Europe to debate and discuss policy and culture with people there as well. One individual that the book focuses on is Kandiaronk, a 17th century Wendat intellectual who debated the French governor in Montreal and whose arguments were popularized by the French soldier Lahonton.

[not1ofU]

One thing that struck me after reading Nikola Tesla's Biography, was how much that guy traveled. He lived between 1865 - 1943.

[golergka]

It certainly would be possible in anarcho-capitalist society. In fact, US in the 19th century was much closer to laissez-faire ideals than today and went through a surge of private road and water channel construction (I could also mention railroads here, but if I'm not mistaken, they relied on government intervention to get the land). I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work for air travel just as well.

[jcranmer]

> In fact, US in the 19th century was much closer to laissez-faire ideals than today and went through a surge of private road and water channel construction (I could also mention railroads here, but if I'm not mistaken, they relied on government intervention to get the land).

A lot of canals and turnpikes were also built by the government--the Erie Canal and the National Road being preeminent examples. Contemporary railroads, such as the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad were usually private. Land grants for railroads were largely limited to the western railroads and for a surprisingly short period of time--only about 1850-1871 were major land grants being used for railroads.

Overall, railroads got roughly the same amount of government support as did canals and roads, maybe even somewhat less. Although this should generally be understood as all infrastructure more or less requiring generous amounts of government support.